Iran turns to China over nuclear deal
Iran’s foreign minister yesterday began attempts to salvage the nuclear deal in China, the country’s biggest trade partner, rather than Brussels, increasing fears that President Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of it will marginalise Europe.
Mohammad Javad Zarif and senior Chinese officials hailed the ‘‘strategic partnership’’ between their countries. China, like the EU, says it wants to maintain the deal but it has also been preparing to take advantage of Trump’s decision to pull out of it.
Zarif’s next stop is Moscow and only then will he fly to Brussels, where he will meet Boris Johnson, the British foreign secretary, and his French and German counterparts.
Heiko Maas, the German foreign minister, said he feared that EU negotiations with Zarif and later with the White House would be unable to shelter European firms. ‘‘I don’t see any simple solution to shield companies from all the risks of American sanctions,’’ he told Bild am Sonntag.
Yesterday Iran’s parliament’s website, reported that Abbas Araghchi, the deputy foreign minister, had told a colleague that: ‘‘The Europeans have between 45 and 60 days to give the necessary guarantees to safeguard Iranian interests and compensate the damages caused by the US pullout.’’
The nuclear deal was negotiated in 2015 by all five members of the UN security council, the US, Russia, Britain, France and China, along with Germany, and enshrined in a security council resolution.
Trump argued that the nuclear deal had failed to rein in Iran’s missile programme or halt its military interventions in the region. He has shown no sign of trying formally to scrap the deal at the UN, meaning that in the first instance only US trade with Iran will be affected. What is unclear is the extent to which Washington will impose secondary sanctions on non-US companies that continue to do business with Iran.
John Bolton, the US national security adviser, said yesterday that such sanctions remained ‘‘possible’’. Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, said he hoped the issue could be avoided if a new, better deal could be negotiated.
Steven Mnuchin, the US treasury secretary, withdrew licences allowing sales of passenger planes to Iran Air not just from Boeing but from Airbus. Airbus had signed a deal for 100 aircraft worth more than US$20 billion but the proportion of American-made parts in Airbus jets brought them directly under US export rules.
For EU countries, trade with the US is always going to be more important than trade with Iran. In theory that is true for Chinese firms too, but in certain sectors Beijing could get round some US sanctions and has begun preparations. It has long wanted to set up an alternative oil trading system denominated in Chinese currency and it launched its first oil futures exchange in March. Depending on how Trump chooses to implement sanctions this could allow China not only to continue to trade without relying on the dollar market, but even set its own terms to Iran for doing so.
Johnson, Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, and President Emmanuel Macron of France all visited Trump in Washington to try to persuade him to stay in the deal. They argued his main concerns related to Iran’s missile programme, broader intervention in the Middle East and plans for after the deal expired, which could all be dealt with in supplementary negotiations.
Maas said those would continue. ‘‘We want to make Iran stick to the restrictions of the nuclear agreement,’’ he said. ‘‘It’s clear that there should also be economic incentives – that will not be easy after the US decision.’’ - The Times